The gold plated glossy one arrived a couple of weeks ago and the silver (not silver glossy) one on Monday. I've been madly trying to improve my photography skills since then.

While the gold plated one has a nice 'sunken treasure' type of finish too it, it's the print quality of the silver one I'm particularly thrilled with. Naturally I tried ordering silver glossy, but I had a reply stating that the detail level was too small to risk polishing it off again. That being said, the quality of the non glossy silver did not disappoint. Even the slight pupil indents in her eyes came out, which was a pleasant surprise.

Nice one Ben, great to see the details came out in these.
Looks like you lost a bit in the gold print as we guessed, but its still looking good, silver really is one of the more impressive shapeways materials.

@Silverbeam - I have a couple of Frosted Ultra Detail ones on the way, mainly for the curiosity factor.

@cadalu - Not sure about post processing. I think I'll at least keep it in the condition in which it arrived from Shapeways for a while in case the need for new photos arises. I'm certainly curious though.

Beautiful in silver. I'm with cadalu - A patina would really make this pop. No need for chemicals either - just put the silver piece in a closed container with a couple of hard boiled eggs cut open. It might take a few hours so use a glass contaianer so you can check progress without opening it. Get it as black as possible and then polish off the patina from the raised surfaces leaving the recesses dark.

Once again, thanks for the comments/feedback and thanks Shapeways team for the Friday Finds mention!

Above is a photo of the FUD prints that came through. They are obviously quite detailed, but it's quite hard to see in person, let alone photograph. I just took a few quick snaps for now, this being the better one.

Cleaning then painting them seems the way to go, but no real rush on that as I basically got them out of curiosity as mentioned. Would rather get on with the next design.

I've also finally got a rendered turntable up from Blender's new Cycles Renderer, given that I don't have any side or angled photos online.

A bit of a thread bump, but I figure it was better than starting a new thread.

I finally got around to trying patina as suggested. It will need a bit of practice to do it repeatably with a nice finish, but so does everything else worth while.

The other thing that will need some practice is using my Macro Bellows. Took a little while just to figure out how to get a decent focus with it, but loving it once I got that sorted.

I tried the patina option with the boiled egg, which worked on the smaller rings I used as test pieces, but I couldn't get any sort of even patina on the pendant. So I heated the pendant up to more or less remove that patina and tried some Liver of Sulphur which worked much nicer.

looks really nice... my favorite patina is just bleach, just put it in bleach for between 2 and 5 mins and give it a light polish. I find the egg or sulfur gives the nice rainbow coulours but the bleach just makes a black which for the rings i do looks more even than the egg and gets right into the crevices, also the bleach will over time continue to get darker.

Just a quick snap that isn't as well focusssed, but it is a bit more representative of the look to the naked eye.

The Patina under a lot of direct light looks more of a dark grey than a black with colour. When looked at outside when overcast and other situations with more of a bounced light scenario the patina really helps it pop. I guess it might go a bit darker over time, but it shouldn't surprise me that metal patina reflects different in different light setups like clean metal does...

A bit of a thread bump with a question about Liver of Sulphur. I understand the chemical used in making the patina is a bit hazardous and requires care. That's fine, I can do careful.

Something that is just me thinking aloud and probably being super cautious, but is the resulting patina on the metal itself hazardous at all? After proper neutralising in bicarb soda solution and a thorough rinse of course. Just thinking in terms of a ring that would be worn all day for example.

Hi Ben, I don't think it is a problem. I personally don't even use bicarb, simply lots of water and drying. In all my research on the subject I have never yet heard of any problems after the patina is applied with LoS. Obviously, if you're using the gel (which I haven't) you would absolutely need to get all the gel out of any crevices.

I would have been surprised if it actually was a problem, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask people who have used it more than I have. I did get some of the gel to use on future pieces, but haven't tried it yet.